The first meeting of Glee club had at least three times the number of people Zdenka thought they’d invited, but from the looks of things, more than half of them were just there to see what this was all about.

There were a whole five people from their year, and then another five from the year before them – “tenth cohort” – including the very distracting Aleron and, miracle of miracles, Yona. Continue reading →

This comes from a conversation I had with Inspector Caracal & Lilfluff on Mastodon.

Content warning: Attempted murder.

🏊🏼

The school pool was empty, which meant, technically, Aelia should not have been in it.

She needed to swim off some stress, though, and she needed to make sure she was in decent shape when the match came. They’d lost against Rotterville-Hampton the last three times, and that was just not happening again. Continue reading →

Yes, there were bullies, and yes there were nerds, or at least a few people in a little clique that she thought were probably nerds.

But on the other hand, there weren’t what she could read as popular kids, there were no sports, there wasn’t even a Math Olympiad or a Chess club – people seemed to group by their suites or their boyfriends/girlfriends or just not choose to clique up. Continue reading →

“All right.” Rose looked at their list of potential clubs. “So Shang first. And then we’re going to have to start fishing around for people who can sing. Maybe start singing in the hallways? That might get some attention.”

“Mmm.” Zdenka wasn’t sure it would get the right attention. “I’ll ask Shang. Maybe he knows someone else.”

Asking Shang proved to be a bit of a challenge; he didn’t want to be caught alone. Once, he went so far as to walk right past Zdenka when she had just managed to get him in his pod common room with nobody else around.

After two days, she finally walked up to him in the lunch room.

“Not interested.” He put up his hands. “I don’t care about the rules of this school, I do not want a freshman girlfriend.”

“I want to be a Broadway star.” Rose, who had been named Rusiko but refused to be known by that, lifted her chin and stared evenly at the Director. “I need extracurriculars to have a chance at a good arts school and, more than that, I need practice.”

“But there are so many more productive things you could be doing. You are…” The Director trailed off, then caught herself. “You are Ellehemaei, fae. You have an amazing repertoire of possibilities at your disposal, and your Word selection could point you at any number of very useful and lucrative careers. So why – singing?” She did not bother to hide the distaste in her voice. Continue reading →

This is a dream, and thus its relevance to canon is, as always, questionable. 🙂

🎃

Regine was having a lovely dream where the gathered Grigori scholars were praising her genetic studies of half-breeds.

“Fascinating,” one murmured, and

“Brilliant. To get such done in such a short scope of time!” and

“How clever. And to wrap it up in teaching them and bettering the world, so that these half-breeds can be useful, for once.”

Something was a little off about this dream. Regine’s smile, of course, did not shift. She would not be Grigori if she allowed a little discomfort to get to her.

“And look, you have some actual pure-breeds in there. How did you manage that? Yourself, of course, it’s easy to provide your own – oh, but I see you have very little of your own genetic material. Well, wouldn’t want to improve the stock too much, now would we?”

“And do you know,” murmured a woman near her, “what happens when a particularly strong line of pure-bred mixes with a weak line?”

Regine didn’t recognize the woman. That happened, from time to time. People would come in for a forum, then leave for another decade or three or seven to pursue their work. Regine herself had done that, before-

Before-

She looked at the woman again. “I believe the stronger line takes hold, yes? If the line is strong enough-”

“It is just like breeding with a human, indeed. Sometimes you end up with a trait or two of the other line, but they are most often discarded as being something of ‘nurture’, as they say, rather than ‘nature.’ The very interesting cases are when, say, a Hunter breeds with a ‘Mara’. Then what do you have? A half-breed? A Hunter? Or a Mara?”

“It would depend on the strength of both bloodlines…” Regine answered slowly. That had been, as far as she was aware, the case with Feu Drake. Then again, with Drake everything was speculation. He gave nothing away but genetic material.

“Indeed. And if it is a Shepherd and a Grigori, where almost all of the Changes are mental, it becomes even harder to tell. You end up with something that, as they say, ‘looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…’ but has the sensible disregard for anything outside of itself and its crew of a falcon. Ah, I miss your mother.”

“My- I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“That daughter of yours. Liliandra. It’s a pity she’s slightly unstable. Otherwise she’d be the splitting image of her grandmother. And how very clever of you, to blame her violent tendencies on the father!”

Regine shook herself awake and stared, unseeing, at the ceiling above her. It was said you never dreamed of someone you didn’t know.

Of course, she reassured herself, it was also said that you should not eat right before bed. She would have to remember to avoid those lovely cookies, nice as they were. That had to be it. The cookies.

She lay back down, but found that she was unwilling to sleep more that night.

Cya Red Doomsday and Leofric Lightning Blade, two of Tilden’s Grandparents. All icons by Djinni.

It had been two weeks.

Tilden had repeated, calmly but insistently, “you should let me go.” Every night. Every time Laufeia ordered him to do something unpleasant – and Laufeia had a taste for rather unpleasant things. Every time she ordered him naked. “You should let me go.”

Eleri, whose own Kept had walked into the collar willingly and who had not nearly the taste for cruelty as her friend, found herself in a bit of a tight spot. She could advise Laufeia to release Tilden – but every time she did, Laufeia got a little nastier, a little angrier. She didn’t just take it out on Tilden, either, but on Eleri and on Caetano and on their third crew-mate, Manlius, who took it all in without seeming to notice or care. Then again, Manlius took in everything. Only at dawn did you get a sense for how stressed he’d been, as the “sun rose” in his room with intense heat or nothing at all. Continue reading →